As the end nears, my heart sinks. But it also makes my mild zoom with wild ideas. What should I do when I get back? What will be different when I get back? I may have new neighbours! (Hopefully another 2 good looking girls ;-). ) I'm actually eager to get on top of paying off my debt. Making me want to go out and get a better job (hopefully being able to still keep the one I have). I know it'll be lots of work to have two jobs, but I'm sure I can stand it for a couple of months. And then what will happen? Move? Stay put? Travel again? Who knows. I will be keeping this blog for my travels, even if they are around Toronto (seeing as how I rollerblade a lot). And I would definitely enjoy doing small trips to the states every once and a while. Of course, after my debt is paid.
Anyway, here goes maybe my last post (maybe not), in Europe. Hopefully I can find free internet/ cheap internet somewhere.
So our 'last' day in Barcelona we toured around for a few hours viewing 2 of the major things. First was the mosaic dragon. It wasn't as big or cool as I thought it would be, but the area around it was pretty enough that it made up for it. All behind the whatchyamacallit was beautiful forestry which seems to be rare in these parts (way to hot to keep anything green). Before we left I sat on the dragon to grab a quick pic, because I saw a bunch of little kids doing the same. I guess I was to fat for it or something because I was told to get off in Spanish. That's okay, Warren grabbed a shot of me glaring at the security dude :-P.
Next stop was the 'Sagrada FamÃlia' which is a Cathedral still in the process of being built. Apparently still has another 20 years or so to be finished. It was interesting to see the difference in the new and older part of the building. You could tell which is which because the stone walls faded from white to a kinda beige cream colour. I thought the older part was a little more epic, but maybe that was because it was the front of the building, or maybe they just aren't as artistic anymore, or they haven't finished the cool design of the new part.
Or next mission was to find an all you can eat sushi place. We walked all over the south part of Barcelona with no luck. But we did see a cool two person band (Called 2 - O) playing Didgeridoos. So far, these guys were the best music buskers we've heard. If you can check find them on the net, listen to some of the music for a bit.
We couldn't find a sushi place so we settled for an all you can eat Chinese place. After stuffing our faces, and feeling bloated, we slowly traveled up a street full of street performers. This was the most memorable part of Barcelona so far. We saw a guy underneath a sheet that used a puppet for his head, he was hilarious even without understanding what he was saying. We saw a statue guy, sitting on the john painted in all white. Whenever someone went up to take a picture with him he let on rip as they walked away. We saw a headless corpse, with the guys head on a platter on a table. He squeaked high pitch noises whenever people walked by. We saw a person dressed as an alien from the Alien movies. His little donation bucket was one of the eggs which they come out of, which I thought was sweet. And of course there were some crazy break dancers.
Wow, I guess I already posted this. A well, now you have a more in depth idea of what the buskers were.
Alright, the next little bit is pretty lame (for you readers anyway).
So we got out of Barcelona and headed to a small town called Sant Pol De Mar. We traveled around for a bit, lost without a GPS to tell us where the campsite was. Which was lucky. We ran into a festival that was happening, and people were just pitching up their tents for free. So we wandered around the small festival for a bit, eager to hear what music will be playing. Nothing happened. So we hit the hay, even though it was still lively. At around 11 or 12, the music STARTED. What partiers, eh? The first band was alright, nothing fancy. But the next one or two, played songs like; Mustang Sally, Great Balls of Fire, and an Evanescence song. But I was mid sleep, so I just listened to them, to lazy to get out.
At some point of the night some kid tried to go into our tent, but I yelled something like 'What do you think you're doing, BUDDY?'... Maybe a little more ruder than that, Iunno, I was mid sleep. So I guess it was lucky that we were in there.
Morning was filled with loud children yelling their vocal cords off until their eyes popped out. A few were slapping our tent and trying to reach our zipper, but we made some growling noises or something to scare them off. When I got up to get my towel I noticed it lying on the ground in the dirt. Great thanks a lot kids. Then I looked for warrens. UH OH! This was our first run-in with something stolen! Warrens towel go snipped. Wow. Whoever steals a towel is a REAL thug. Not to mention a wrinkly-stinky towel that hasn't been cleaned for a month and a half.
Anyway we packed up, went to the real campsite. It was cheap, but rough. Again not real camping (unless you count RVing real camping).
Next 3 days we spent on the beach. Nothing to tell really. Just found a nice shaded spot 4 feet beneath a train track. It was cool to lie under there while the train passed. The large cement blocks would actually bend against the wait. We read, tanned, napped, swam for the next few days. Or first beach day was grand. There were large waves we were running into, doing flips, flops, drops, and many dives into. We sat right near where the waves were and let them drag us through the sand. I'm sure we looked like 2 kids who escaped from the special camp, but that made it all the more fun. Second beach day (or third, the days were kinda blended together) there was a guy who had a water board (one of the things that glides along water for a short distance) and he offered for me to try. It was a lot harder than I expected. I slipped, fell on my ass, face, and belly. But it was worth the try and laughs for sure.
So, on the 20th, after the great days of beach bumming, we headed back to Barcelona to go to Paris. Trains were full, until the next day (today). Oh well, another day here :-). We found a hostel 'Alberg Oere Tarres'. We also booked everything except our last bus. So our schedule is up on our twitters. We only need to book the bus from Brussels to London, and then we only need to worry about food!
So hopefully I can post another post after or in Paris, but I'll definitely post one once I get back and get my computer.
Oh haha and a little bit of funnyness for today:
SO I woke up excited for the free breakfast, and free coffee. The breakfast wasn't all you can eat, but that's okay, the coffee was. So I drank 4 espressos and a coffee, WHIZLE WHAM BAM! Energy is STILL going after 3 hours. So I go onto my email and this is part of my horoscope I have posted '' Think about turning down that second cup of coffee today, for you'll already be buzzing without any extra caffeine ''... haha WOOPS! Guess I shoulda went online BEFORE breakfast.
Anyway, I'm gonna go out and explore some more before we leave!
Taataa
Cody
Friday, August 21, 2009
Saturday, August 15, 2009
2 more weeks...
Alright, I left in mid post last time because I ran out of time, so hopefully that won't happen now, but I have more time so it shouldn't.
So straight to the point I guess...
Uhhh, so we got to Bologna and realized how crappy the Italian train system is. The trains are stinky, hot, and slow. Not to mention the machines that give you the tickets spit out whatevers most conviniant for them to make money. But it's better than going to the ticket sales people because they just give the most expensive way. Anyway we found out in Bologna we could have gotten a cheaper train ticket and saved 20€, thanks TrainItalia for helpen us poor tourists out...
Anyway we eventually made it to Florence, and headed to a campsite, where our misery of the day continued. We got into the campsite at dark, and got a nice little go kart ride down to where we were going to sleep. At this point I was thinking this place was high class... Then we got a feel for the ground. It was mainly hard ground with gravel shot in every which direction. This was HARDly the place for sleeping (yes that's a pun :-P). Not only was the ground hard and uncomfortable but we got some stank pizza at the campsite kitchen. Whatever, it filled my belly.
So on the 1st of August we woke up soar and sleepy, eager to get up and out of the hard ass ground. Another scorching hot day, we ended buying three 1.5L bottles of water throughout the day. We headed to the museum where Michaelangeloes David stands tall and nude. It was a lot more bigger than I ever imagined it to be, and WAY more detailed. It even had veins on his hands and extreme detail like that. There were a few other cool things, like a photography display. Whether it was worth the 10€ each is beyond me, but we had to pay to see some monumental thing at some point. Not much else to do in Florence so we just toured around sweating our balls off. We made it back to the campsite for Happy Hour, where bottles of wine were 2.50€ each. We drained 3 of them down and bought one for later. Wine hit us a LOT harder than we expected, but that was quite alright. It made it very easy to pass out on the hard gravel.
We got up feeling nice and hungover from the hardcore wine. We went into town to get our tickets and some Paninis, yum. So we took the cheap train ride down to Rome, and Warrens phone died, so we didn't have much choice of where to go or stay. Information was closed because it was around 7. Luckily this 'tourist info' guy came up to us, clearly knowing we were lost without a place. He told us there were no hostels within 30 minutes of travel time, and that they were untrustworthy anyway. So he brought us to a hotel that was only 45€ for a double. Clearly this dude worked for the hotel, and wasn't a tourist guy at all, because when we charged Warrens phone we found like 6 hostels within a 1o minute walk of the station.
So the next mornign (3rd) we got up and went to a few hostels to check out their prices and such. We found a decent one, so we booked 3 nights there. We got our stuff locked up and headed out to Rome! First stop Colloseum! We didn't end up going in because it was 12€ just to get in without a tour. But the outside was legendary. A definite thing to see and walk around many times when in Rome. We walked up a street called Alessandrina where there were tons of ruins. At the end of them, in Colona Traiana, there was a cool pilar with a sort of storyline/comic going up in a spiral. Right next to this was Monumento aVittoric Emanuele. Whatever this building was it was massively epic. There were statues all along it. I could only imagin how the inside must have looked. Next stop was the Pantheon. Don't get confused by this churches crappy exterior, that looks demolished and crumbled because the inside is completly wonderful. Theres Huge marble pillars holding the front up, and inside is completely marble, except the dome ceiling I think is like concrete or something, with a big round window in the middle. Onto the Fontana di trevi now. This was by far the most beautiful fontain I have ever seen. There were winged horses and people trying to tame them, with (what I beleive is) Posiden in the middle looking out and beyond. Next we saw Piazza della Repubblica and San Carrio Quattro Fontain, not much to saw about those. We then went on a Pub Crawl, met a bunch of people, not much to say about the actual crawl.
The 4th was just a relaxing day. Sat in our beds, read, and ate. We made our best meal so far. It was Penne Rigate, with some sort of cheese sauce. Then we took some chicken boobies and cooked them in oil, tomatoes, and onions. Yummy in my tummy. We drank a little bit with 2 Americans.
The 5th we toured around more of Rome with one of the Americans. We showed him some of the main things we checked out 2 days before, then split up at the Pantheon and headed the the Vatican. The plazza just outside was amazing, with Pillars everywhere and dozens of statues on top of them. The insid of the Vatican was the most vast and epic and legendary and beautiful thing I have EVER seen. The ceilings were like 40 feet high. There were statues of a bunch of popes all along. There was a small room listing all the popes that have reigned (or whatever it is they do) I heard someone say tehre were 146.
New city time! We headed to La spieza, where we got in late, with no hostels around, UH OH! We wondered around for like 2 hours with our packs on. We saw 2 parks, one which was sketchy so we went to the more lively one and I passed out on the grass for a bit, which was a mistake. Srpinklers came on which made me jump outta my pants quite quickly. So I passed out on a bench for 3 hours. Warren was a champ and didn't sleep at all.
So on the 7th we headed to a hostel in Biassa, waited for 2 hours for them to get back from there 4 hour lunch, and found out they only had girl rooms left. Crap. Luckily we were chatting with 2 Austrailian girls while we were waiting, so they didn't mind us spklitting the room with them. Whew, saved our tired asses there. We slept for pretty much the rest of the day and night.
Cinque Terre time! This is some sort of National park with 5 small towns in between. So we found a campsite in LAvento and then went for the 5 hour hike through small mountains and through the towns. On the last stretch there were these homeless cats that you can donate to and feed. I didn't donate (had no coinage) but I did feed them. They seemed to enjoy that. Two ditsy American girls witnessed this so we started talking to them traveling back to the last town. These were the cougars Warren was mentioning in his Blog. We ate a seafood meal with them, slowly finding out they were crazy. We split at the train station. We could have followed them to there hotel that they had. We probably would have but at that point they were unsure if they actually had a place because they were supposed to check in at 6pm and it was 11pm.
No worries, they bragged about they're place the next day when we ran into them. Why did we have to be so nice and carry there massive bags everywhere through Lavento? Got nothign out of it to... Well Live and learn I guess... So we headed tto the beach for the rest of the day.
Getting out of Cinque Terre, we headed to Nice.
Nice is not Nice
We didn't book anything because we had no problems so far. Everythign was full up. Crap. We stayed at McDonalds for a while using their free WiFi and me up with 6 Russian girls who were in the same boat as us. They were only in Nice for a 2 days. They were scared to be all along with no manly figures around. So the asked if we could tag along with them to 'protect' them. I`m not sure what I would have down if something actually happened. I'm not strong enough to fend off 6 other dudes. But nothing happened, Warren and I stayed up all night while most of them slept. The beach sucked. It was all rocks. I don't know how they slept on them. We kept our minds awake by throwing rocks into the water and I built a happy face rock thing.
The next day there was still nothing available. Whatever we bought the most expensive tickets so far. 76€ each just to get out of crap city. And that was still the next day. Great another night of no sleep! Whatever, we slept all day in a park, and went back to MCdonalds where I slept on their outside benches.
BARCELONA BABY!
The train took 13 hours with 3 transfers in between. We met up with 2 Americans from Fargo, and they tagged along to the hostel we actually booked online. We got our own private room for only 20 €. We slept most of the next day away, and went downtown and night. We saw some of the most amazing buskers (street performers) we've seen so far. Lots of people dressed up, which gave us the idea of doing somethign like that the next time we travel around Europe or God knows where else.
Today I am here, alive and well. getting poorer by the day, but that's okay because Barcelona is very cheap. We plan to stay here another 5 days 4 of which are cmaping so that will be cheap. yay.
Anyway I'm almost out of time now so peace out!
2 weeks... Yikes, can't believe that's all that's left.
So straight to the point I guess...
Uhhh, so we got to Bologna and realized how crappy the Italian train system is. The trains are stinky, hot, and slow. Not to mention the machines that give you the tickets spit out whatevers most conviniant for them to make money. But it's better than going to the ticket sales people because they just give the most expensive way. Anyway we found out in Bologna we could have gotten a cheaper train ticket and saved 20€, thanks TrainItalia for helpen us poor tourists out...
Anyway we eventually made it to Florence, and headed to a campsite, where our misery of the day continued. We got into the campsite at dark, and got a nice little go kart ride down to where we were going to sleep. At this point I was thinking this place was high class... Then we got a feel for the ground. It was mainly hard ground with gravel shot in every which direction. This was HARDly the place for sleeping (yes that's a pun :-P). Not only was the ground hard and uncomfortable but we got some stank pizza at the campsite kitchen. Whatever, it filled my belly.
So on the 1st of August we woke up soar and sleepy, eager to get up and out of the hard ass ground. Another scorching hot day, we ended buying three 1.5L bottles of water throughout the day. We headed to the museum where Michaelangeloes David stands tall and nude. It was a lot more bigger than I ever imagined it to be, and WAY more detailed. It even had veins on his hands and extreme detail like that. There were a few other cool things, like a photography display. Whether it was worth the 10€ each is beyond me, but we had to pay to see some monumental thing at some point. Not much else to do in Florence so we just toured around sweating our balls off. We made it back to the campsite for Happy Hour, where bottles of wine were 2.50€ each. We drained 3 of them down and bought one for later. Wine hit us a LOT harder than we expected, but that was quite alright. It made it very easy to pass out on the hard gravel.
We got up feeling nice and hungover from the hardcore wine. We went into town to get our tickets and some Paninis, yum. So we took the cheap train ride down to Rome, and Warrens phone died, so we didn't have much choice of where to go or stay. Information was closed because it was around 7. Luckily this 'tourist info' guy came up to us, clearly knowing we were lost without a place. He told us there were no hostels within 30 minutes of travel time, and that they were untrustworthy anyway. So he brought us to a hotel that was only 45€ for a double. Clearly this dude worked for the hotel, and wasn't a tourist guy at all, because when we charged Warrens phone we found like 6 hostels within a 1o minute walk of the station.
So the next mornign (3rd) we got up and went to a few hostels to check out their prices and such. We found a decent one, so we booked 3 nights there. We got our stuff locked up and headed out to Rome! First stop Colloseum! We didn't end up going in because it was 12€ just to get in without a tour. But the outside was legendary. A definite thing to see and walk around many times when in Rome. We walked up a street called Alessandrina where there were tons of ruins. At the end of them, in Colona Traiana, there was a cool pilar with a sort of storyline/comic going up in a spiral. Right next to this was Monumento aVittoric Emanuele. Whatever this building was it was massively epic. There were statues all along it. I could only imagin how the inside must have looked. Next stop was the Pantheon. Don't get confused by this churches crappy exterior, that looks demolished and crumbled because the inside is completly wonderful. Theres Huge marble pillars holding the front up, and inside is completely marble, except the dome ceiling I think is like concrete or something, with a big round window in the middle. Onto the Fontana di trevi now. This was by far the most beautiful fontain I have ever seen. There were winged horses and people trying to tame them, with (what I beleive is) Posiden in the middle looking out and beyond. Next we saw Piazza della Repubblica and San Carrio Quattro Fontain, not much to saw about those. We then went on a Pub Crawl, met a bunch of people, not much to say about the actual crawl.
The 4th was just a relaxing day. Sat in our beds, read, and ate. We made our best meal so far. It was Penne Rigate, with some sort of cheese sauce. Then we took some chicken boobies and cooked them in oil, tomatoes, and onions. Yummy in my tummy. We drank a little bit with 2 Americans.
The 5th we toured around more of Rome with one of the Americans. We showed him some of the main things we checked out 2 days before, then split up at the Pantheon and headed the the Vatican. The plazza just outside was amazing, with Pillars everywhere and dozens of statues on top of them. The insid of the Vatican was the most vast and epic and legendary and beautiful thing I have EVER seen. The ceilings were like 40 feet high. There were statues of a bunch of popes all along. There was a small room listing all the popes that have reigned (or whatever it is they do) I heard someone say tehre were 146.
New city time! We headed to La spieza, where we got in late, with no hostels around, UH OH! We wondered around for like 2 hours with our packs on. We saw 2 parks, one which was sketchy so we went to the more lively one and I passed out on the grass for a bit, which was a mistake. Srpinklers came on which made me jump outta my pants quite quickly. So I passed out on a bench for 3 hours. Warren was a champ and didn't sleep at all.
So on the 7th we headed to a hostel in Biassa, waited for 2 hours for them to get back from there 4 hour lunch, and found out they only had girl rooms left. Crap. Luckily we were chatting with 2 Austrailian girls while we were waiting, so they didn't mind us spklitting the room with them. Whew, saved our tired asses there. We slept for pretty much the rest of the day and night.
Cinque Terre time! This is some sort of National park with 5 small towns in between. So we found a campsite in LAvento and then went for the 5 hour hike through small mountains and through the towns. On the last stretch there were these homeless cats that you can donate to and feed. I didn't donate (had no coinage) but I did feed them. They seemed to enjoy that. Two ditsy American girls witnessed this so we started talking to them traveling back to the last town. These were the cougars Warren was mentioning in his Blog. We ate a seafood meal with them, slowly finding out they were crazy. We split at the train station. We could have followed them to there hotel that they had. We probably would have but at that point they were unsure if they actually had a place because they were supposed to check in at 6pm and it was 11pm.
No worries, they bragged about they're place the next day when we ran into them. Why did we have to be so nice and carry there massive bags everywhere through Lavento? Got nothign out of it to... Well Live and learn I guess... So we headed tto the beach for the rest of the day.
Getting out of Cinque Terre, we headed to Nice.
Nice is not Nice
We didn't book anything because we had no problems so far. Everythign was full up. Crap. We stayed at McDonalds for a while using their free WiFi and me up with 6 Russian girls who were in the same boat as us. They were only in Nice for a 2 days. They were scared to be all along with no manly figures around. So the asked if we could tag along with them to 'protect' them. I`m not sure what I would have down if something actually happened. I'm not strong enough to fend off 6 other dudes. But nothing happened, Warren and I stayed up all night while most of them slept. The beach sucked. It was all rocks. I don't know how they slept on them. We kept our minds awake by throwing rocks into the water and I built a happy face rock thing.
The next day there was still nothing available. Whatever we bought the most expensive tickets so far. 76€ each just to get out of crap city. And that was still the next day. Great another night of no sleep! Whatever, we slept all day in a park, and went back to MCdonalds where I slept on their outside benches.
BARCELONA BABY!
The train took 13 hours with 3 transfers in between. We met up with 2 Americans from Fargo, and they tagged along to the hostel we actually booked online. We got our own private room for only 20 €. We slept most of the next day away, and went downtown and night. We saw some of the most amazing buskers (street performers) we've seen so far. Lots of people dressed up, which gave us the idea of doing somethign like that the next time we travel around Europe or God knows where else.
Today I am here, alive and well. getting poorer by the day, but that's okay because Barcelona is very cheap. We plan to stay here another 5 days 4 of which are cmaping so that will be cheap. yay.
Anyway I'm almost out of time now so peace out!
2 weeks... Yikes, can't believe that's all that's left.
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
When in Rome!
I am alive! Do not fear!
So last time I left off we were jsut about to leave to go to Italy, and now we are at the heart of it in Roma.
So the day we left to Italy we took a dip in the pool to cool us off befoer our long travel. Then headed out to the train station. We ended up going to Milano, because it was to expensive to go anywhere else. We ended up getting in Milano after a 4 hour train ride, (which for more than half we had no idea if we were going the right way, due to how amazingly little direction there was at the Domodosilo station). So we ended up going to Piero Rosto Youth Hostel, which I was worried wold be booked considering it was like the only hostel in Milano. But we got the cheapest rooms, with a free Italian breakfast! Don't get to excited, it was actually the worst breakfast in a hostel so far. It was baguettes, crackers, jam, nutella (or some form of it anyway), and corn flakes (OH! But only if you're an early riser! They take it away after an hour, because, you know, corn flakes are SOOOO expensive). The best part of this breakfast was that the coffee was free so we just ended up drinking like 3 cups before heading out.
Anyway we just hung around for the night because it was too late to do anything.
So after getting wired off free coffee we headed out to see Milan (Milano if you're english). The first thing we did was check out the Duomo, which was spectacularly large! It could fit up to 40,000 people in it during a ceremony. Too bad there wasn't any organ playing in it. Or next stop was Castello Sforzesco, which was a decent enough castle with a big fountain inforont of it. Notmuch to see here, just a very large park behind it. We tried to go up a tower to have a high glance of Milan, but they closed for four hours between 12pm-4pm. (Hmm if only I had the luxury of that lunch break) So we headed on to the Milan Monumental Cemetery. This was epic! There were massive marble and stone statues for grave stones. There was one which was very eerie and looked like a diseased mummy\zombie looking thing, and a very odd person next to him wallowing in sorrow. Very odd. And this was only on the side of the graveyard, the central graveyard was much more baffeling, with statues\gravestones up to 2 stories high. Maybe I'll be buried here some day with a giant statue of me giving the thumbs up. We didn't tour to much around here because it was hot, and we were thirsty, beat, and soar in the feet! So we wend back to the hostel and whined about the heat.
We got loaded up on coffee once again and went to the train station to get to a famous city called Veniezza! Venice to those of Canada :-P.
We ended up getting there around 4 and were instantly baffled at the water surrounding us. We paid an a exetnsive amount (for 'bus' passes) but we could see why. There were not busses (or very few) what they called busses were actually large boats to float you to your destination. There were even taxi boats, which amused me. We made our way to the island we were staying at (Lido) and easily found our hotel. That's right! We stayed at a hotel, it feels good to say that. It only cost like 5€ more to stay there. So we ended up paying 50€ for one night for a double room, with AC (thank God), private bathroom, and cable TV. We left our nice and cool room to take a boat around Venice, and ended up just looking out the side at all the craziness. We toured the Great Canal.
It baffled us! It looked like the buildings were all just ploped there which no islands at all, it just looks like the buikldings go right down into the water. We got back to the hotel, drank a bottle of wine, and watched CNN. (There were onyl 2 english channels, both news, but we were glad to be watchign something we recognized).
After a great nights sleep, with no interruptions, in pure darkness, we headed to tour around Venice. We went to one of the churches, and took a gander around it. The line up was way too long to be standing in in the dead heat with no water. We would have fainted before getting in. So we just walked around venice (with over 1000 bridges) Each alley way heading somewhere different. Some heading into an alley way of water, which the only use (as far as I could see) would be for a pee after a drunken night trying to find your way back).
After the hot day of wondering the city we decided to go to the beach a few cheap beers. We swam there for a few hours then got some spectacular pizza and headed 'home'.
OUur next trip was supposed to be to Rome, but we ended up going to Florence because it was cheaper. Doing this is when we learned that the train system in Italy stinks major skunk ass. We tried goign to the ticke salesman, but it was cheaper to go to the machines (why? I have no idea) We bought our tickets with a transfer in Bolgna
Ran outta time will post later...
So last time I left off we were jsut about to leave to go to Italy, and now we are at the heart of it in Roma.
So the day we left to Italy we took a dip in the pool to cool us off befoer our long travel. Then headed out to the train station. We ended up going to Milano, because it was to expensive to go anywhere else. We ended up getting in Milano after a 4 hour train ride, (which for more than half we had no idea if we were going the right way, due to how amazingly little direction there was at the Domodosilo station). So we ended up going to Piero Rosto Youth Hostel, which I was worried wold be booked considering it was like the only hostel in Milano. But we got the cheapest rooms, with a free Italian breakfast! Don't get to excited, it was actually the worst breakfast in a hostel so far. It was baguettes, crackers, jam, nutella (or some form of it anyway), and corn flakes (OH! But only if you're an early riser! They take it away after an hour, because, you know, corn flakes are SOOOO expensive). The best part of this breakfast was that the coffee was free so we just ended up drinking like 3 cups before heading out.
Anyway we just hung around for the night because it was too late to do anything.
So after getting wired off free coffee we headed out to see Milan (Milano if you're english). The first thing we did was check out the Duomo, which was spectacularly large! It could fit up to 40,000 people in it during a ceremony. Too bad there wasn't any organ playing in it. Or next stop was Castello Sforzesco, which was a decent enough castle with a big fountain inforont of it. Notmuch to see here, just a very large park behind it. We tried to go up a tower to have a high glance of Milan, but they closed for four hours between 12pm-4pm. (Hmm if only I had the luxury of that lunch break) So we headed on to the Milan Monumental Cemetery. This was epic! There were massive marble and stone statues for grave stones. There was one which was very eerie and looked like a diseased mummy\zombie looking thing, and a very odd person next to him wallowing in sorrow. Very odd. And this was only on the side of the graveyard, the central graveyard was much more baffeling, with statues\gravestones up to 2 stories high. Maybe I'll be buried here some day with a giant statue of me giving the thumbs up. We didn't tour to much around here because it was hot, and we were thirsty, beat, and soar in the feet! So we wend back to the hostel and whined about the heat.
We got loaded up on coffee once again and went to the train station to get to a famous city called Veniezza! Venice to those of Canada :-P.
We ended up getting there around 4 and were instantly baffled at the water surrounding us. We paid an a exetnsive amount (for 'bus' passes) but we could see why. There were not busses (or very few) what they called busses were actually large boats to float you to your destination. There were even taxi boats, which amused me. We made our way to the island we were staying at (Lido) and easily found our hotel. That's right! We stayed at a hotel, it feels good to say that. It only cost like 5€ more to stay there. So we ended up paying 50€ for one night for a double room, with AC (thank God), private bathroom, and cable TV. We left our nice and cool room to take a boat around Venice, and ended up just looking out the side at all the craziness. We toured the Great Canal.
It baffled us! It looked like the buildings were all just ploped there which no islands at all, it just looks like the buikldings go right down into the water. We got back to the hotel, drank a bottle of wine, and watched CNN. (There were onyl 2 english channels, both news, but we were glad to be watchign something we recognized).
After a great nights sleep, with no interruptions, in pure darkness, we headed to tour around Venice. We went to one of the churches, and took a gander around it. The line up was way too long to be standing in in the dead heat with no water. We would have fainted before getting in. So we just walked around venice (with over 1000 bridges) Each alley way heading somewhere different. Some heading into an alley way of water, which the only use (as far as I could see) would be for a pee after a drunken night trying to find your way back).
After the hot day of wondering the city we decided to go to the beach a few cheap beers. We swam there for a few hours then got some spectacular pizza and headed 'home'.
OUur next trip was supposed to be to Rome, but we ended up going to Florence because it was cheaper. Doing this is when we learned that the train system in Italy stinks major skunk ass. We tried goign to the ticke salesman, but it was cheaper to go to the machines (why? I have no idea) We bought our tickets with a transfer in Bolgna
Ran outta time will post later...
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